NORTH DOWNS & BEYOND

Sarah Raven's excellent TV series, 'Bees, butterflies and blooms' finished last night with her attempts to turn Birmingham into a city that boasted wildflower meadows within its concrete heart. She and the Brummie councellors succeded to a point. The cameras also visited Leeds and Liverpool where some simply stunning transformations had taken place. Sterile grass banks and prim and proper flower beds had been turned into billowing masses of Corn Marigolds, Cornflowers, vervains and a host of other flowers that encourage pollinating insects to subsequently proliferate. The series has made me think about how we treat our modest garden here in Banstead. We are on chalk and the opportunities are many to encourage the sort of plant species that insects love. I posted about a similar scheme in Cheam Park last June (click here).  I'm looking forward to donning the gardening gloves, searching out the trowel and attacking our chalky soil in the very near future. I'll keep y...

I have just spent a most enjoyable and informative hour watching 'Bees, Butterflies and Blooms' on BBC2, presented by Sarah Raven. The aim of the programme (and series) was/is to highlight the plight of Britain's wild flowers - not only the fact that their decline is one that is an aesthetic loss to us, but more importantly the worry that our insect population are in freefall and that this in turn reduces the number of pollinators of many of our important crops. It was a joy to see flower-filled meadows and actually have a botanist, on prime-time television, showing off the delights that such places harbour. I was immediately reminded to plug Sarah's latest book (pictured left). You could at first mistake it as nothing but a coffee-table book, but you would be wrong. Inside you will find stunning photography, particularly the habitat spread shots that will leave you looking deep into them for several minutes before being enticed away to read the i...